In conjunction with Easter and Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, Italian photographer Francesco Capponi decided to capture his self-portrait by converting an egg into a pinhole camera. His vision was to create a single-use camera that could be part of the image creation process, rather than just recording it. The result: the Pinhegg camera obscura.

Compared with a traditional camera that uses a lens to capture images, the Pinhegg's "lens" is a precision-drilled hole of a single aperture. Light enters the hole and projects the scene as an inverted image on the film emulsion painted inside the egg. The result is a negative imprinted within the egg itself.

Francesco Capponi

On the site Lomography, Capponi provides detailed instructions on how you can start making your own egg pinhole camera. The materials are easily available, but the process is tedious. Capponi sacrificed 50 eggs in his quest to produce four images of decent quality.